


It Reminds Me of You

by Mangomoth



Category: Fight Club (1999), Fight Club - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Jealousy and Self-Love, M/M, Marla really did try, Mindfuck, One Shot, Unrequited Love, double meanings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 16:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20473961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mangomoth/pseuds/Mangomoth
Summary: Marla gives the man she loves a gift, and he re-gifts that gift to Tyler.





	It Reminds Me of You

I gave Tyler a plate once.

It was so shiny black that I could see my face in it when I turned it around. It reminded me of Tyler and his swagger, all except for the little yellow dandelions printed around the border weaved through gold stems. Last week, Tyler slept with a woman I hate and asked me never to talk about him to her, ever. The more I held the plate in my hands the more I thought the flowers suited the plate quite well.

It had probably cost its original owner ten times its manufacturing price. It wasn’t Sustainably Sourced. The same company probably had a side assembly line just for feather boa plastics and milk carton lids. We had about two plates in total in that house between us and Tyler never complained. I didn’t mind, either.

We have a triangle thing going here, except this Marla woman wants us both. I’m not convinced she can tell us apart sometimes. She has the most god-awful pathetic personality I’ve ever seen. She doesn't stand a chance in the long run, I tell myself.

I pictured coming home one day with the plate wrapped up in yesterday’s newspaper hidden in the shelf. I’d tell him, honey I’m home, and he’d smirk in the doorway. That way I know he heard it. I'd step past him and gently lower the wrapped plate from the dark little room I'd kept it in for a day. He’d look down at the newspaper and back to me, and ask what I have there. I’d hold it out for him to pick up, and he’d reach out. Throw it up softly, press his fingertips into the face.

She crawls her way into my house into occupied beds with occupied people that have occupied thoughts, and she demands things from them. Sometimes she’ll try talking to them. Seeing her dumb, white, little face makes me want to crunch dry weeds.

Like some demented, starved cat she brings gifts to the house. She presses them wrapped in thin today's-newspaper into my palms and looks up at me with her doll’s eyes, smiling softly through weird little stories she makes up to sound funny or cute. I lean away elbows first and put whatever dirty thing it is this time on a paper towel on the table, still in its beloved, scrunched-up packing.

I ask her, who’s it for.

This is where I remember Tyler doesn’t appreciate materialistic things. So I guess after I give it to him he’d unwrap the plate and put it in the drying rack without rinsing it, leaving the newspaper wrapping on the table. But it’s not about materialism, it’s a gift.

I’d laugh breathlessly and explain loudly over his tall shoulder. Do you see what I mean? Black with yellow flowers, because you’re so… you know? Tyler would give me one of those looks. Direct, not blank or happy. He’d turn around and start saying some crazy bullshit about consumerism and pollution or something dramatic like that, and he’d do it with a straight face while unscrewing the cap on a muddy-yellow plastic container of milk with a tube sticking out.

I blink, and ask her why she bought that thing.

“The colour reminded me of your eyes, if you must know,” she says. Another time she knew a guy who was being evicted and needed to get rid of his hoard. I was expecting her to add that she stole it or found it lying on the street protected with a layer of the same newspaper she’s just put in my clean palms. My eyes, not his? I scoff, insulted at the implication but pleased on some deeper level I choose to set aside.

“Don’t bother. We don’t need more plates,” I say. Not quite kind, not quite cruel, but you’d think I told her I enjoyed her dildo, she starts so hard.

“So you do want me to move in? You need to make up your goddamn mind. Just what is it you wan- hey!”

She’s so fucking entitled. The muscles in my stomach clench and my face burns as I lean over her tiny frame, and I hiss, “Forget about us. Stop coming here.” I pick up her stupid bribe with a single hand, recklessly, carelessly, the newspaper just barely textured enough to hold onto the grooves of the underplate. Marla takes one look at it and storms away, soft brown feather boa biting my ankle as she finally fucks off to her hole in the ground.

When I sat down with a cup of steaming coffee the next day I caught Tyler unraveling the torn newspaper. He put that wrinkly old yesterday’s thing in his pocket and disappeared from the room without a glance at my gift, or a twitch of his lips. His eyes reflected the harsh late sun streaming through the gaps in curtains, black. Even from my safe place in the future after I gave him that dumb plate, I can feel my ears and throat closing up and turning light red.

There’s no one in the kitchen but me. I shove the gift into the plate cupboard and slam the door.


End file.
